36. August Recap
Originally published August 30th, 2024
What Happened in August?
Hello FMOF community and welcome to our SECOND monthly recap! Looking back at how thrilled I was of our first month’s success, suffice it to say, I am ecstatic about our growth since that time. As our community expands, little by little, I am meeting great people, hearing great music, and I’m along for the ride as I watch each and every one of you grow and reach your untapped potentials.
In the month of August, FMOF published FIFTEEN new blogs. In the states, we expanded our represented list to artists from Georgia and Pennsylvania, Maine, Missouri, Washington (twice) and New Jersey, Alabama, Virginia and D.C, and another artist from New York and California.
Internationally, we reviewed artists from Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Australia, The Netherlands, and Denmark.
For a grand total of 31 reviews, FMOF have reached artists in 15 States (and one District) and we have extended our international reach to 8 countries spanning over 3 different continents. The internet is truly a wonderful thing!
I want to thank every single artist who submitted music to be reviewed in the month of August. To start, I want to recognize the 15 artists who were reviewed:
I am so proud to have been asked to write reviews for each one of these incredibly talented artists. Their music styles were diverse, representing Indie Rock, Rap, Folk Country, Southern Rock, R&B, Country Western, Goth House, Fantasy Pop, Folk Americana, Hyperpop, and ClubDance Electro Pop.
I want to thank every artist who submitted music. I wish I could write a review for every single one of you. Trust me when I say, I listen to your submissions and I’ve not once heard a song or project I would be unwilling to write about. As it is just me doing this, I have the task of balancing this initiative along with a career I’m working to advance in. In August I also had the bittersweet experience of sending my first-born son to college in Chicago, which is 7 hours away from me in Nashville. That coupled with school starting for my other children, I’ve been very focused on spending time with my family.
I’m not here to make excuses. I simply say this to beg patience. As always, I am on a mission to reach and help as many artists as I can. I’ve been doing this for 2 months and I love it. It is inspiring a new passion for music within me.
My, How We’ve Grown!
Off of the momentum of our first month, the FMOF community has continued to grow as we reach more independent artists and listeners every day! Here are some of the places we have seen growth:
First, the blog. Last month, we had 916 site visits with 5 comments left on the blogs themselves. This month, for the total of 35 posts, the blog has been visited a total of 2,277 times! Additionally, we have seen an increase in the number of comments as there are now a total of 28 comments that have been left on the reviews! That is way more than double the previous month’s totals, which is outstanding. I wanted to point out, I haven’t been pushing this, but it would be great if we could start/get our listeners to start actually following the blog so they can be made aware of new reviews being posted. Hopefully, in doing so, it will put the blog in front of even more faces!
On Social Media, we continue to show signs of growth across the board.
On Threads, the #fmof has been implemented, which has given our audience a reference to guide them to any and all information related to Fifteen Minutes of Fame. Since last month’s initial boost in followers of 60%, the FMOF continues to grow with an additional 24% of followers who have joined our community. The initial post seeking artists to submit their music had nearly 200 likes, over 150 comments, and nearly 100 artists submitting music for review!
On Instagram, building from an initial 9% increase, the community grew another 25.7% and extended a reach increase of more than 37% as we continue to seek people who would be interested in joining our community.
Finally, on Facebook, we continue to grow our audience there as well, building from our initial 225% increase to adding an additional 12%. I know this sounds like a dramatic dip in the inflation of members, but keep in mind, the Facebook platform launched with the blog essentially, so it is expected to see that deflated increase. A 12% growth is impressive.
Please continue to try to get the word out for artists and listeners alike to come and check out the FMOF community as we continue to work towards the mission of bringing exposure to all of these wonderful independent artists!
In two months, I am thrilled with the progress and direction that FMOF has made and I will continue to work towards increasing our reach. I want to extend the invitation for anybody who has an idea to share, please let me know if anything else I could be doing. Any resource, insight, or tidbit of advice is certainly welcome. Please feel free to message me on instagram.
What’s Next?
September Campaign
In the next couple of days, I will be opening the submission floor on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook. In an effort to keep a more organized pool of submissions, I am going to try to direct artists to submit their music through Instagram Direct Messaging. I unfortunately overlooked some things last month and became a little overwhelmed with trying to balance submissions across several platforms. In an effort to consolidate the pool, I am going to try to incorporate this process.
In August, I started exercising a request from artists who I wrote reviews for. I call it my “three asks.” Again, I don’t make any money for doing this and I will never ask for payment from an artist in exchange for a review. Being an independent artist myself, and an actual human being who lives in our society-not to mention I work in finance and have a front row seat to observing global economic situations, I know that the budget for independent artists are very important and can easily be stretched thin. I don’t want to be the cause of that.
So, how can you “pay” me? By honoring my 3 asks:
1. Use the hashtag - in an effort to grow our audience, I ask everybody who posts about, shares, etc. to try and use “#fmof” to direct readers to posts regarding the blog. In doing this, it gives us the opportunity to reach more readers, more artists, and improves our capability of growing our community.
2. Be Creative - Obviously, once I post an article, it’s no longer mine, it’s everybody’s. This isn’t an expectation, so much as it is a helpful suggestion. If you want to just repost the article, refer listeners/readers to the article, etc. that is you’re prerogative and I’m all for it. But one of the things that inspired me to write reviews is to give independent artists a published reference to their work. An example I often like to refer to is Kiffie, an artist had the privilege of reviewing last month. He made a promotional video featuring reviews he’d received for his album and it looked great. Don’t be afraid to come up with new ideas of promotion. Independent artists don’t have the luxury of humility. Put yourselves out there!
3. Pay it Forward - For the 31 artists who have been reviewed, I hope you get something from it. I hope the comments mean something, I hope it helps boost your site visits, streams, etc. In return, I simply ask you give that opportunity to another reviewed artist. Visit any one of the reviews I’ve written for an artist and take time to experience the blog. That means listening to the music, following the artist’s social media platforms, and commenting on the blog. Leaving comments on the blog itself will generate more traffic to the blog, which will just help you all with the goal of expanding your audience. And the whole mantra of the Fifteen Minutes of Fame concept is predicated on the community concept: I don’t want just one artist succeeding. I want all of you to succeed. If we all commit to this, as we grow, we will all feel the love. I don’t expect 24/7 involvement. Fifteen Minutes is what I ask. That can be fifteen minutes a day, fifteen minutes a week, or fifteen minutes when you think about it. But do it. Respect each other’s art as you want your art respected. Do this, and everybody wins.
Interviews
As I stated in my July recap, I had planned on trying to incorporate interviews with artists. Well, I can happily announce that I have conducted the FIRST FMOF artist interview with the one and only FMOF OG, LuisG. I am currently located in the epicenter of editing HELL trying to make this thing look somewhat presentable for you but be expecting it to go up shortly! I will be trying to do one of these every month. If interested, hit me up on Instagram
REELS Challenge
This month, I plan on starting a REELS theme, “How I Listen to FMOF.” I will be doing every day activities and showcasing music from our very own FMOF Community! The exciting thing about this is you don’t have to just be a spectator, you can join in! Kudos to the most creative REELS
FMOF Spotify and Apple Playlists
Last month, I launched the Apple Fifteen Minutes of Fame New Releases playlist to go along with the one already available for Spotify. I listen to these on the regular! Please make sure you are saving these playlists and listening to it! I update it with new music every month. In an effort to keep it new and interesting, I am going to start refreshing the playlist weekly! Feel free to share it amongst your friends, family, and other listeners!
Rounding Things Up
Overall, I am thrilled with what we have accomplished so far with Fifteen Minutes of Fame. I don’t want the work to stop here. As we aspire to a bigger and brighter future, I am going to continue to think of ways to get us to the next level. I have a few ideas, some of those ideas I have begun setting goals for and others are still on the drawing board.
One thing I could use some help with is designing a logo. If there are graphic designers in our midst, I would love to see some ideas or hear thoughts on what could possibly be a fun logo to represent who we are.
I also want to invite all of you to keep me in the loop on any and all upcoming things you have. Releases, shows, tours, tv spots, interviews, etc. I want to make sure every one of you are being supported.
On a personal note, I wanted to close this article out with a little bit of news of my own:
I will be releasing a single on September 13th called Tangible. Though it will be new to publication, it is actually the last of my old music I wanted to reproduce from my old band days as a member of Next Year’s Best. The process was a little bittersweet because this is very much a rock song and it was great to turn the clocks back and play this kind of music again. But, I also discovered I may have lost a step with my vocal performance. I was able to pull it off for the record but not without the realization that this may be my last hard rock song. Which, this is ok because I have naturally been moving more towards Folk and Americana lately anyway. All that aside, I am proud of the record and I am so excited about sharing it with you. It is releasing on all streaming platforms on September 13th!
That is all I have. I know this is long but there is a lot of information in it! Thank you for reading!
Social Experiment:
Last month, I did this and I only received one response and it wasn’t done correctly.
If you have read this far, I want you to leave a comment on this blog (not anywhere else) comment ON THE BLOG with this word: acrobat
Acrobat! Thanks for all your hard work in supporting indepedent music, Jeff!
ReplyDeleteYay!!!!! Thanks for reading and participating in my social experiment, Matt!
ReplyDelete